LAS VEGAS — VMware and Arista executives provided more details about integrating NSX security capabilities with Arista switches during VMworld’s NSX keynote. And Arista’s founder took an indirect jab at rival Cisco and its proprietary technology.

VMware and Arista have been working together to bring common security policy enforcement to virtual and physical workloads, said Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s Networking and Security business unit. The integration provides a single pane for policy administration, and it automates enforcement across Arista’s physical switches and VMware’s virtual infrastructure.

“We created an open or extensible framework that allows us to learn the NSX policies and access them in the physical switches,” said Andy Bechtolsheim, founder, chief development officer, and chairman at Arista.

Through these efforts, NSX security policies can be enforced from mainframes to data centers to public clouds. This collaboration also marries Arista’s macrosegmentation services (MSS) with VMware NSX microsegmentation capabilities.

Bechtolsheim stressed that it’s an “open framework,” adding “we believe there will be other partners who will join this effort for an open environment.”

And then Bechtolsheim's Cisco zinger: “Proprietary is not a word in our dictionary.”

There’s no love lost between Arista and Cisco. Arista recently agreed to pay Cisco $400 million to settle existing litigation between the two companies.

VMware also looks to be encroaching on Cisco’s intent-based networking turf with its Microsegmentation 2.0 initiative. This effort more deeply integrates NSX and VMware’s vSphere technologies with its AppDefense security product and can help create a “self-driving data center,” VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said during an earlier VMworld keynote.

Photo: Tom Gillis (left) and Andy Bechtolsheim during VMworld’s NSX Keynote.